


A Stain of Clay

by lustmordred



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-14
Updated: 2011-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 08:43:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lustmordred/pseuds/lustmordred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel really does suck at goodbyes, but then he's only human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Stain of Clay

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after the finale episode "Swan Song." Gift for someone at the LJ community insmallpackages. The prompt was the Beagle quote.

I have been mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet.  
I am full of tears and hunger and the fear of death,  
although I cannot weep, and I want nothing, and I cannot die.

  
_Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)_   


 

The displaced air of Castiel’s flight doesn’t wake Dean like he thought it might. There was a time, not all that long ago, that it would have brought Dean out of sleep already reaching for the knife he kept hidden between the mattress and the box spring, but now he doesn’t even stir. It says a lot about him that Dean would never admit and even if he did, Dean would never believe that Castiel knows him well enough to see it and connect all the dots. It speaks in sad old languages with soft whispers of an exhaustion and world-weariness that pulls at him, like fingers reaching through the crust of the earth from Hell to drag him back. They’ll do it by excruciating inches, but they’re so determined, these fingers. And Dean? He’s close enough to nearly welcome them. His exhaustion is not just that of a man having reached a place of stillness after a long battle and an even longer journey. His tiredness is of the world, of everything piling on top of him then never letting him go, bringing him back and back to do it again, to finish the job, whatever it is. It’s an exhaustion that comes after giving all, after losing everything, after still trying just one more time when the world keeps telling him to quit.

It’s doing all of that, then coming to the end only to find… nothing but the end, still there and waiting. No reward for his valiance beyond a cease-fire and even Castiel has to wonder, is this peace or is it freedom?

Castiel stands in front of the window in the cramped little motel room where Dean goes on sleeping and watches the empty parking lot illuminated in dirty yellow light through the filmy, cigarette burned curtains. He watches a bulb go out in the red vacancy sign over the office, watches an alley cat with half a tail drag the half-eaten remains of a wormy Big Mac still wrapped up in yellow paper into the deeper night shadows of the building to eat it. He watches a tired, drugged-up prostitute who pays rent at the motel monthly come home alone and go into the room next door to sleep.

There’s a chair by the window and a little wobbly card table to sit at, but he doesn’t sit. He does consider for a moment pulling the chair over to the bed to sit there and watch Dean, whose sleeping and pungent, pervasive humanity is like hooks on the end of fine fishing lines drawing Castiel into his orbit like a moth willing to sacrifice itself to the fire. He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his coat and doesn’t do this. There is a memory, a not very distant one, of Dean eying him with some kind of weird trepidation because Castiel was once again forgetting or foregoing all of his learned knowledge of personal space.

The memory makes him smile. He is watching a junkie fight with the soda machine outside the office when he smiles that fond, almost regretful smile, and he knows that it’s an expression commonly considered inappropriate for the situation, but he feels it and that is a rare thing so he does it anyway.

He’s still smiling to himself when he hears Dean say his name from the bed.

“What are you doing here?” Dean asks. He’s either too close to sleep still or too emotionally drained and out of touch to really sound like he cares about an answer.

“I’m not sure,” Castiel says. He turns around to look at Dean and leans against the windowsill, the light through the curtains behind him making him nothing but a black human shape in the dark. The dirty parking lot light gives him a halo and a soft, ethereal glow. “I think… to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye?” Dean repeats. He sits up in the bed, then swings his legs over on the floor and sits there with his elbows on his knees and his fingers combing through his hair. “What are you talking about? You suck at goodbyes.”

“I know,” Castiel says. His lips quirk with an involuntary twitch of amusement. “I heard you.”

“What?” Dean says.

“As I was leaving you in the car,” Castiel explains. “I heard you say that.”

“Oh,” Dean says. “Well… you do.”

“I think perhaps I would like to try it again,” Castiel says. He stands away from the window and approaches the bed, only to halt when Dean tenses up and looks at him like Castiel is threatening him. “What is it?” he asks.

“You’re not… I don’t know, dude, but you say something like that and here I sit in my undies on the bed and here you come like… I don’t even fucking know. Like Alexander the Great set on conquest and I’m the… Look, just don’t try anything funny, okay?” Dean says, all of it falling out of his mouth in a rush as he watches to see what Castiel is going to do.

Castiel frowns at him and cocks his head curiously. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” he says after a moment of thought. “I am not in a particularly facetious mood at the moment.”

Dean sighs, then coughs out a laugh and looks relieved.

“You did not think I was going to attack you,” Castiel says in disbelief.

Dean shakes his head. “No… not really.”

Castiel pulls the chair away from the table and sits in it facing Dean at more of an eyelevel. This time Dean doesn’t tense or even lift his head to look at him and Castiel wonders at this. It wasn’t very long ago that Dean wouldn’t have even noticed Castiel drawing nearer until he was “invading his space.” But then Castiel lost his temper and beat him, and though he still believes that Dean needed it, he’s been slightly skittish around him ever since. Like now, with Castiel staring at him, his eyes lingering on the soft, vulnerable back of his neck because Dean won’t lift his head. Castiel just wants him to look at him.

“Dean, will you look at me, please?” he says, his voice soft because it is a request, but also because he thinks that maybe Dean won’t do it. He wants to be able to pretend, like humans do, that he never asked if that proves to be the case.

Dean rolls his eyes up first, then lifts his head and meets Castiel’s gaze. Castiel wants to touch him, but he knows that Dean would not welcome it, yet he reaches out to do it anyway and brushes a thumb beneath Dean’s left eye to feel the way his soft lashes tickle his fingers when he blinks.

“Don’t,” Dean says.

Castiel raises both eyebrows at him. “What is it you believe I’m going to do?” he asks.

Dean takes Castiel’s wrist in his hand and pushes his arm back to him. “Nothing, just… I don’t know, okay? What do you want? I thought we were through. It’s over, man. It’s done, I got my freedom and shit like you said, remember? So now I’m going to Lisa’s because I got nowhere else to go and shit, man, why aren’t you back upstairs being Wyatt Earp instead of creeping around my room in the middle of the night?”

“Because I have to say goodbye to you,” Castiel says.

“Alright, well… goodbye,” Dean says.

“It will not be forever,” Castiel says. “But it will be for a long time, as you perceive time.”

Dean rubs his hands on the thighs of his sweat pants and nods shortly. “Good to know,” he says. “I might… you know… miss you if you stayed away too long.”

Castiel smiles at him. “I know,” he says simply.

He knows that he is all that Dean has left now. He has Lisa, somewhere out there waiting for him, ready to wait for him forever if that’s what he needs her to do, but Castiel is the only one left who stood there with him, who dared it all and more, who understands the taste of Hell’s cinders and how they can be so sweet. And for Castiel, Dean is his friend, his first and, now that Sam is gone, the only one he has. Dean sometimes forgets, but when he remembers, he knows absolutely what Castiel has lost and what he was willing to give.

But there is a piece that Dean doesn’t know.

“I love you, you know,” Castiel tells him. He says it like it is more fact than emotion, which it is now, and sees Dean’s eyes widen from the corner of his vision. “No. That’s not quite right,” he says.

Dean relaxes and lets out a huff of breath. “Dude, watch what you’re saying, throwing around shit like that. It’s dangerous.”

Castiel smirks and gives Dean a mildly taunting look. “It is indeed,” he says. “I believe what I really meant to say was I _loved_ you. Which is not the same thing at all.”

“Well, gee, thanks, Cas,” Dean says dryly. “It’s nice to have been loved. What did I do to ruffle your feathers and change your mind?”

Castiel blinks at him. “Nothing whatsoever,” he says. “I was human for a time and I loved you then. I’m not human anymore, so it’s gone now. But I wanted to tell you. I don’t know why, just that I remember wanting to tell you when I still felt it. So I have.”

“So you have,” Dean repeats, staring at him in surprise.

“There is an emptiness that will not close now,” Castiel says softly, casting his eyes beyond Dean’s shoulder to stare at the light that has made it though the curtains to leave shapes on the wall. “It’s still there, I can feel it. Not feel it. I am not sure exactly how to describe it. It is a feeling of not feeling. Does that make sense?”

Dean runs his tongue over his top lip and sucks it between his teeth, lightly chewing. “Ah… I don’t know. Why… I mean… I’m not really an expert on that kind of thing, Cas.”

“No, you aren’t,” Castiel agrees. He returns his gaze to Dean and frowns a little. “You are incredibly bad at feeling nothing.”

Dean snorts out a soft laugh and runs a hand over his face, but he nods. “Yeah.”

“This love I speak of,” Castiel says, his voice dropping to a whisper as though cautious that something out there might hear him. “This love… was not the love I was required to feel to keep you safe, to follow you, to… This was not love for the righteous man, it was--”

“I think I get it,” Dean says.

Castiel shakes his head, but when he looks into Dean’s face, he believes him. Of course he would understand it, where Dean Winchester loves, it is a passionate, burning bright thing. It’s powerful, unfathomable, capable of altering the destiny of worlds and at once darkly hideous and twisted, but so beautiful. Of course he would understand the nature of Castiel’s love, it must be a small, insignificant thing when placed in the shadow of something so vast.

Abruptly, Dean takes one of his hands and Castiel stares at Dean’s rough fingers as they slide through his own and grasp. He gently clenches and unclenches his fingers in Dean’s hand and feels him squeeze back, which is intended to mean something that Castiel doesn’t understand. He raises his eyes from their joined hands and stares back at Dean, who smiles at him in a soft, almost encouraging way.

“I don’t love you anymore,” Castiel says in a whisper, his voice breaking in a way that irritates and confuses him. “I remember it. It is remarkably difficult to retain the memory of an emotion.”

Dean nods, but he doesn’t seem to quite know what to say to this. “I bet,” he says.

“My brothers see you as weak,” Castiel says. “Humans; fragile, mortal, inconstant creatures who live but a moment. They don’t understand how this can make you _more_ than they are and not _less_.”

“But you know?” Dean says and he sounds doubtful but still curious.

“Oh, yes,” Castiel says, but he doesn’t attempt to explain it. He touches the fingertips of his free hand to the back of Dean’s where it is holding his other one and traces the lines of tendons down from the backs of his scarred knuckles. “I have lived for thousands upon thousands of years. I will live for thousands more. Never before have I felt my own end like the weight of a hand on my heart. I understand fear, I feel the weight of my years pushing on this borrowed body. There is an urgency inside me now that never was before, it insists that my time is running out. I have had a soul and I experienced emotions that defy intellectual reason. I have loved in a way that is outside my right to love, beyond my nature to feel, and it has left a mark in me, an empty place that feels as though it is trying to eat through me.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean says stupidly, not knowing what else to say. Castiel speaks as though he is confessing and Dean obviously finds it disturbing. “I… I don’t know what you want me to say. Or do. I can’t really… I mean, what _can_ I do?”

“Nothing,” Castiel says.

“I didn’t know,” Dean says. “You… We had a job to do, Cas. A fucked up and impossible job, but it was a job. You weren’t supposed to love me. I’d… I’m sorry, I am. Fuck, man. That is just… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Castiel says. He tries to smile for Dean’s sake and it almost looks genuine. Except for the eyes where it doesn‘t quite reach. “I wouldn’t give it back. I don’t feel it anymore but I remember it. It was… horrible. Hateful. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever come close to in my life. I don’t know how you bear it. I think I would become insane or tear myself apart.”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, a small, sad smile playing at the corners of his mouth. That smile is enough to tell Castiel that Dean isn’t really thinking about him at all. “I’m sorry, though. I don’t think… I don’t think you’re supposed to feel that kind of shit. You’re supposed to be more like your… brothers.”

“I’m supposed to hate you, yes,” Castiel says. “That emotion is as beyond my reach as love, though I think I could be made to feel it. It isn’t limited to mortals the way this type of love is… Or it doesn’t seem to be.”

“Nope, it sure doesn’t,” Dean says.

Castiel leans cautiously closer to Dean, watching him as he does for a sign of retreat, and brushes his mouth over Dean’s lips. Dean doesn’t jerk back as Castiel expects he will and Castiel can feel for just a moment the hot swell of Dean’s top lip where he nervously chewed it. “I wish I could love you still,” he whispers.

Dean leans into him and tilts his head slightly to offer more, a full kiss if Castiel will take it. “Have you tried?”

Castiel makes a soft sound of ironic amusement in his throat and doesn’t answer. He sees the shine of tears in the shadow of Dean’s long eyelashes and watches as a teardrop slides into the hollow of his eye. “If only I could,” Castiel murmurs.

He puts his mouth to the hollow of Dean’s eye and kisses away that fallen tear. Others follow it and he brushes at them with his fingers. “There will be war again, though not down here this time, and I have to fight. I would take that into battle with me. I have seen what your love can do. It’s a frightening thing.”

Dean reaches out with his free hand to grab Castiel, his fingers sliding up the back of Castiel’s neck into his hair to pull him closer as he tries to kiss him. Castiel doesn’t fight him, he allows it, even opens his mouth to the kiss when Dean presses his tongue insistently against his teeth. He feels the desire of his body rise up in answer to the kiss and Dean’s nearness, but that gnawing, abysmal place left open like a wound where Castiel once felt real love only widens with the understanding of what he cannot have and what he no longer wants. He wants to _want_ it again, but that is not even remotely the same thing. What he feels now is the tragedy and loss of finally being offered his heart’s desire when he no longer has the humanity or the heart to desire it.

Castiel reaches back and takes Dean’s hand out of his hair as he breaks the kiss and gently pushes back. Dean makes a frustrated sound at this and starts to move toward him again, but Castiel shakes his head and stands, slipping his hand free of Dean’s grasping fingers.

“I can’t,” Castiel says.

“Can’t or won’t?” Dean whispers, and there is a tension to his body and his expression that says he is ready to be rejected because he senses that is what is happening.

“No,” Castiel says, shaking his head. “No, I _can’t_. There is no rule, I simply can’t. I would do it if I were still… but I’m not. I don’t feel it anymore.”

“You don’t want to do it anyway?” Dean says and there’s a light in his bright eyes that Castiel recognizes even in the dark, though he’s never seen that sexual interest turned upon himself before.

“All I have is what I know now,” Castiel says. “What I know is that on the brink of war, I cannot risk a fall from grace.”

Dean pulls one leg up on the bed and wraps his arms around his knee, regarding Castiel over it as he rests his chin there. “So what? You apparate into my room and just unload all this shit you _don’t_ feel on me for what? You want a hug? A gold star? A Kewpie doll? Did you ever think maybe _I_ don’t need anymore crap right now, Cas? Like maybe part of you not loving me anymore should be that you keep it to yourself because it doesn’t do anybody any good?”

Castiel frowns down at the carpet between his feet and sighs. “No,” he says. “It felt… necessary.”

“Yeah? Well it’s _not_ ,” Dean says.

Castiel looks at him and starts to apologize, then changes his mind and with a rush of wind, he slips away and leaves Dean behind.

“You still suck at goodbyes,” Dean mumbles into the back of his leg. He crawls back up the bed and buries his face between the two musty motel room pillows. He tries to think of Lisa, tries to think of it like going home, but he can’t get Castiel out of his mind. “Damn you, Cas,” he whispers right before he falls back to sleep.

 

  
**XXX**   



End file.
